Across human history, plunder and conquest were the norm; ancient DNA shows repeated population replacements and a severe Neolithic male bottleneck. What distinguishes modern rich societies is not unique access to plunder but the institutional shift from predation to protected exchange—monopolized violence, property rights, and rule‑of‑law that curb raiding.
— This reframes colonialism and development debates away from zero‑sum blame and toward building anti‑predation institutions as the path to mass prosperity.
Yascha Mounk
2025.10.02
62% relevant
Marozzi emphasizes slavery as a near‑universal human institution inherited across faiths and empires, echoing the idea that predation (including enslavement) was historically normal and societies became wealthy when institutions shifted away from predation toward protected exchange.
Brian A. Smith
2025.10.01
70% relevant
The article’s core claim—that pre‑modern intergroup relations were dominated by predation and fear, and that modern equality is enabled by more secure conditions—echoes the idea that plunder was the historical baseline and that institutional shifts away from predation made modern prosperity (and egalitarian norms) possible.
Tyler Cowen
2025.09.27
60% relevant
Broadberry & Zhai’s claim that Britain and the Netherlands had sustained positive TFP growth after the Black Death while Ming–Qing China saw negative TFP supports the view that institutions and innovation—not plunder—drove durable prosperity gaps.
Steve Stewart-Williams
2025.09.06
70% relevant
By arguing that the slave South was poorer than the free North and thus slavery wasn’t the engine of U.S. prosperity, the article aligns with the claim that modern wealth stems from protected exchange and institutions rather than predation or exploitation.
Isegoria
2025.09.02
78% relevant
The article argues territories kept under U.S. rule (e.g., Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico) economically and politically outperform former U.S.-controlled regions that became independent, attributing gains to integration under U.S. institutions—mirroring the thesis that protected exchange and governance, not plunder, create prosperity.
Mary Harrington
2025.09.01
55% relevant
By asserting that Britons with Norman surnames remain wealthier than those with Anglo‑Saxon surnames and tracing how Norman elites rewrote 'British' identity to legitimize rule, the article echoes the claim that predation and elite consolidation set long‑run distributions until institutions lock them in.
Lorenzo Warby
2025.08.24
100% relevant
The article cites Inuit replacement of prior Arctic foragers, Neolithic farmers erasing British Mesolithic lineages, Indo‑European incursions, and the y‑chromosome bottleneck to argue plunder is universal and prosperity arises when it is replaced.
Matthew Yglesias
2025.08.21
70% relevant
The article’s core claim that institutionalization (rule of law, predictable decision-making) drives growth over regime labels aligns with the existing thesis that anti‑predation institutions, not ideology, enable prosperity; it extends this by specifying that 'personalist' autocracies underperform.
Charles Haywood
2025.08.14
72% relevant
The novel’s near‑future America features oligarchs pillaging through private armies and pervasive predation as central control evaporates—an explicit reversion from protected exchange to plunder once institutions fail, mirroring the existing thesis that anti‑predation institutions are what make societies rich.
Isegoria
2025.08.14
70% relevant
By claiming Rome’s low trust kept exchange inside kin networks and that North Sea/Baltic societies’ preexisting trust and family patterns enabled impersonal markets, the article adds a behavioral-genetic microfoundation to why some regions built exchange-friendly institutions and wealth.
Lorenzo Warby
2025.07.13
85% relevant
The article’s 'maritime order' (positive‑sum trade) vs 'continental anarchy' (zero/negative‑sum resilience) mirrors the piece’s predation-versus-exchange framing, applying it to Russia/Ukraine, Iran’s proxies, and the U.S.-led rules-based order.
Eric Kaufmann
2025.05.26
75% relevant
The article echoes the claim that long‑run prosperity is driven by institutions rather than zero‑sum extraction, citing studies (e.g., Lange on pluralism and property rights; Bergh on the 'French curse'; Corderi Novoa on deforestation and property rights) showing former British colonies outperform peers due to governance structures.